My how time flies! June already?

Oh I have been so negligent in posting haven't I?  What can I say, life keeps me busy.

Let me see where we left off-----oh yes, we were buying a calf.  That plan has changed.  We didn't buy the calf, we decided to wait and get a cow in milk when Ed has has time to build the barn.  Kind of like not wanting to get the cart before the horse kind of thing............

Sally's new teeth have grown in.  Audrey had her 10th birthday and got her ears pierced.  She is thrilled and feels so grown up!

I need to get pictures taken of the plants in the greenhouse.  They look as good if not better than the ones for sale in town now!  I am so thrilled with the greenhouse.  The plants grow straight up!  No turning them to keep them from growing towards the kitchen window.

The sheep knocked over the two beehives in the pasture.  Ed had to suit up again and rescue the very unhappy bees.  NO stings this time!  Thank you Lord!

I must take pictures and post them of my pretty little violas and pansies.  Besides roses and lilacs, I just love love love pansies.   They have the cheeriest faces and make me smile each time I see them.  I have gotten a little carried away with buying them this year.  But they come back and reseed themselves so  they are well worth the investment.

I have found my new interest to grow in the greenhouse just for fun.  Miniature roses!  So far I have one.  : )  I promise to get photos taken of everything soon.

And I was promising a drawing soon.  I will be doing that also.  Can't wait to see what it will be for can you?  Good!

Today is my youngest son's birthday.  He turned 30!  Happy Birthday Jared!  I am so proud of you.  Love you bunches!

I must sign off for now.  I will be back with photos and more updates soon.

Hope everyone has had a good Spring so far.  Looking forward to Summer.

Guess what we have now?

I am so happy to tell you this exciting news!  We went to an organic local dairy today and bought a Jersey heifer!  She is a little over 6 months old.  We are also going to buy a cow in milk from this nice man as soon as we have the barn built.  I can't believe it, I will finally have a cow that is actually milking.  In the mean time we are going to raise this young one up and she can help the sheep mow the pasture.

I don't have any photos of her yet.  The farmer is going to bring her to us this week sometime.  I will take photos of her then and share them with you.

In other news, we have 3 new baby ducks!  White rose hatched out 3 eggs.  I will get photos of them up too.  We should be having some Dark Cornish hatch out soon.  We have two hens sitting. I thought we would have a bunch of babies, but Ed tells me the one is only sitting on one egg and the other has two.  Then we have in the hen house a Black Australorp sitting on 6 eggs and a Speckled Sussex that has 4 eggs.

So far the turkey hens haven't gone broody on us.  We had one act like she was going to, but gave it up.

Stay tuned for more photos and a drawing coming soon.

The latest Buzz and Baa at Bountiful Acres

We have had some exciting things going on with the bees.  First of all Ed's new hive of free bees swarmed.  This photo above is where they landed in our orchard in an apple tree.  Thankfully it wasn't way up in a huge tree where he couldn't get to them.

They swarm because the hive is too small, or another queen was born and the resident queen didn't catch it and kill it.  So the new queen leaves the hive and a bunch of the worker bees and drones follow her.

Here Ed is trying to use a net that I made to capture the bees.  It didn't work, so he used a box instead.

The box worked great and he was able to capture this swarm.

He gave these bees to a friend of ours who lost his bees this past winter.  It is just a small swarm, but we are praying the Lord blesses them and it grows into a big colony.

Then the next day around the same time in the afternoon it swarmed again!!!!!  We couldn't believe it.  This time they gathered in the grape vines between our property and our neighbors.  He gave this swarm to one of the members of the bee keepers association who also had lost all his bees last year.

During this time of messing with the bees, he got stung 3 times!  Once in the face, took several days to get over that one, then again in the neck under his chin.  Then the third time was in the arm.  We did get some homeopathic medicine for bee stings and to prevent them from stinging.  It seems to work as the last sting wasn't as severe and went away quicker.

While he was looking at his hive, he found out that he has mites in his bees.  That is not a good thing, and they can cause the hive to die.  He bought natural pest control for the hive that has honey in it and the regular medication for the two hives that don't have honey.

The day the hive swarmed for the second time he also received his pkg. of bees he had purchased.  So now he has three hives.  His goal is to have five.

Here is a photo of the greenhouse.  This is the North facing wall. 

This is the south facing wall.  It has more windows.

This is the front door which faces west.

This is the inside looking toward the front door.

This is an earlier photo taken front the front door area.

Can you believe I had all those plants in my kitchen?  This table is 2 ft. wide and 16 ft. long!  I need to take more photos as Ed built me another table that size on the other side.  I will take more photos after I get the tomatoes transplanted.

These are our poor citrus trees.  They didn't do well inside the hot house last winter.  I hope they will revive for us.  Our lime tree died completely as it had gotten too cold before we brought them inside last fall.

Guess what this is?  My walking onions.  Sometimes they are called Egyptian onions or topsetting onions.  The flower part on top makes bublets that when they get heavy, they fall over and then when they are touching the soil, they send down roots and grow more onions.  Hence, the walking onion name.  That is why I have them in a tub, so they don't "walk" all over the farm!

Here is the "baaa" part of the story.  What do you do when your pasture is becoming overgrown, you have too many laying hens and turkeys?  Well you sell a pair of turkeys, and sell 10 laying hens.  Then you go and buy a couple of sheep to mow the pasture for you.  That is our reasoning anyway.    works for us!

See how tall that grass is?  They have a lot of work to do!

This is our black ewe.

This is our white ewe.

They are half Katahdin, half Romney.  They are half hair sheep.  They are the kind of sheep who loose their hair, and don't require shearing.  Since they are only half, we will be shearing them.  Now won't that make for an exciting post?  I will be sure and record that for you all to enjoy.

That is my Dad.  Can you see what he built for me?  An arbor for my wild climbing rose at the end of the walkway to the gazebo.  Thanks Dad, I love it!  (The young man to the left is my nephew in law, Jesse.  He gave Dad a hand setting it in place.)

Okay I have spent enough time on the computer.  I must get out to the greenhouse to transplant those tomatoes.  They won't hop in the new pots on their own.  : )

May your day be blessed!

How was your Easter?

How was your Easter Sunday?  I am so thankful that God sent His only Son to pay for our sins and raised him up from the dead. 

We had a nice dinner with our family.  We had ham, potato salad, rolls, beets, asparagus and green salad and cranberry sauce.  For dessert we had blackberry shortcake.  Dinner was good, and the company was great.

We had a total of 15 at the table.  I should say tables, as we had a small table for the 4 older girls. 

My baby sister and my nephew are here for a visit.  They drove down from Bellingham Washington on Saturday.  I haven't had a chance to visit much with them yet.  We have so many here at once it is rather noisy and several conversations going on at once.......that is just the way it is when so many of us are gathered in one place.  : )  Kristy and Patrick will be here for several more days, so I am sure we will get a chance to visit in that time.

On Saturday I was doing some prep cooking for Easter dinner.  Those of you who read this blog know that we get a lot of eggs each day from our poultry.  Most of the time it is right at 3.5 dozen a day.  Gathered in a nice bucket, set in the fridge until I have time to clean them and put them in the cartons.  Well this is what happened on Saturday.......(see photo below.)

Yep!  I was rearranging the fridge and pushed the entire bucket of eggs out on the floor.  It hit with such force that raw egg splashed up the side of my leg and I had to change pants as I was dripping with egg!  The only eggs out of the entire bucket that didn't break were a couple of duck eggs.  Do you know how much fun that was to clean up?  LOL!  I used the dust pan to scoop up the most of it.  Then had to use rags to clean the rest. 

Ed brought that same bucket in last night full of eggs and said to me, "there ya go, another bucket of eggs!"  I managed to get them into the fridge without breaking any. 

More big news is Sally has lost two teeth now.  Here is a  couple of photos of her proudly displaying the empty spots.

We can already see the new teeth coming in.

These are cookies we made from a recipe in my old cookbook.  The name of the book is Farm Journal's Homemade Pies, Cookies and Breads.

They called them dishpan cookies, as it makes such a large batch they used their dishpans to mix them up.  They are actually made with molasses and rolled oats.  I baked 4 dozen and still had this much in the bowl.  (I have very large stainless steel bowls, so I didn't need to use a dishpan.)  : )

I ended up forming the left over dough into two logs, wrapping them in foil and putting in the fridge.  A few days later I sliced them and baked a batch.  I did this on two different days.  I am thinking of mixing up a bunch of this dough and putting the logs in the freezer for baking a batch of cookies when the mood strikes without making the mess of mixing all the dough.  Besides then we aren't tempted to eat too many at once. 

Here is the recipe if you would like to give it a try.  I have made changes to the recipe to adapt to our way of eating.  I put those in ( ).

 OATMEAL/MOLASSES COOKIES

8 1/2 cups sifted flour (I used fresh ground soft white wheat flour)

1 TBSP salt

2 TBSP baking soda

8 cups quick oats (I used old fashioned oats)

2 1/2 cup sugar (I used 1 cup honey)

1 TBSP ground ginger

2 cups melted shortening (I used melted coconut oil)

2 cups light molasses (I used old fashioned molasses)

4 eggs beaten

1/4 cup hot water (I omitted the water to make up for the liquid of the honey)

3 cups raisins (I didn't have any so I used chopped dates)

2 cups ground black or English walnuts (I used almonds as I didn't have any walnuts cracked)

sugar for tops (I omitted this)

Reserve 1/2 cup flour.  Sift together 8 c. flour, salt and baking soda.  In a very large bowl or dishpan, mix rolled oats, sugar and ginger.  (If using honey instead mix the honey with the beaten eggs.) Stir in shortening, molasses, eggs, hot water (remember to omit water if using honey), sifted dry ingredients, raisin and nuts.  Work dough with hands until well mixed.  (Too messy for me, I used a wooden spoon.)  Add the reserved 1/2 c. flour is needed to make dough workable.  (I found I needed to use it because of the honey.) 

Roll dough to 1/4" thick and cut with 3 1/2" cutter.  (I just scooped about a tablespoon into my hands and shaped into a disc.  Kind of like making a hamburger patty.)  Place 2" apart on a greesed cookie sheet.  Brush with water and sprinkle with sugar.  (I omitted this step)

Bake in a moderate oven (375degrees) 8-10 minutes.  Remove cookies to a rack to cool.  Makes 6 dozen.  (They must have made huge cookies to only get 6 dozen.  I made more like 8 dozen from this recipe.)

I am thinking of making up another recipe kind of like this using maybe some applesauce instead of molasses.  Maybe another batch with cocoa powder and peanut butter for part of the shortening.  The possibilities are endless..............  I don't like making cookies, as I am too impatient to bake them.  I want to make something put it in the oven and be done with it.  Not keep fooling around putting them in and out of the oven every ten minutes.  : )  So if I had this all mixed up and in the logs/rolls I wouldn't mind baking a batch or two at a time.  My family would be so pleased with this idea.  : )

Check back for updates and new photos of our vegetable starts and green house news.

Huge turkey egg

Just the other day Mrs. Mike and I were talking about the size of turkey eggs.  How we both thought they would be bigger than they are.  Well one of my turkeys must have heard us talking!  Look at this whopper!  It was easily twice the size of the other turkey eggs.

And this is the reason it was sooo huge!  "Double yolker" as my girls like to say.

This is what else I did today.  Baked a batch of bread.  Well this is the left overs.  I actually did another small loaf for my Mom and Dad and also baked a pan of rolls.  But the small loaf is at Mom's and we ate the rolls for lunch!

More March news

This is another photo of the greenhouse in the making.  Both ends are done and the rafters are laid on top.

Another angle.

And yet another view.

You can see the bees coming home from a hard days work if you look closely.

These are some Blue Andalusian hens we are putting up for sale.  Aren't they so pretty?

Some exciting news we have on the farm today is we have two different turkey hens wanting to sit!  We are so happy we might have baby turkeys this Spring.  This will be the first time we have had turkeys that hatched out their own offspring.

The Lord is good! 

Happy first day of Spring!

Today is the last day of Winter.  Thank the good Lord!  Tomorrow is the first day of Spring.  It is very welcomed here.  The daffodils have already about bloomed themselves out.  Now our orchard is coming alive with some pretty blossoms.  The white blossoms above are of our green gage plum tree.

Today was a very pretty day.  It was actually hot!  So I took some photos of the place.

The above photo is of Ed's new beehive.  I painted it for him yesterday.  He mixed up some left over paints and this is the color it turned out.  Sky blue, isn't it pretty?  He will be getting another pkg of bees next month.  So he has to have their new home all ready for them.  He was given a free hive of bees last month.   Those need to be moved into a new hive, but we aren't sure how to accomplish that.  As they have made comb in a hive box without foundations.  Anyway, after getting the next pkg. of bees that will make 3 hives we have.  Hopefully we will be putting up a "local honey for sale" sign next to the eggs for sale sign.  : )

This is a photo of my seed starting in my kitchen.  There will be lots of  peppers, tomatoes and onions, leeks, eggplant and squash, cucumbers, and cole crops in our garden this year.  I can't wait until that green house is finished!  Speaking of which, here are some photos of the progress being made on it.

This is how the greenhouse looked early this afternoon.  Then I went back in the house to vacuum and dust.  When I came back outside .......

This is what I found!  My dear husband is making great progress in getting this built.  It is going to be quite large.  The measurements will be 12' X 32'.  I think I should have plenty of room for growing veggies year round and for starting them for the garden each year.  He would have made it another 4 ft. wider, but we are right up against the orchard on the left and the berry rows on the right.

Below are a few more shots of it. 

I was standing on the turkey porch and took this shot.  You can see beehive number 1 in the lower right hand corner of this photo.

This is Ed (in the hat) and Dad at the end of the day.

This is the hardworking man himself.  It is amazing what he can accomplish!  I am sorry ladies, but I do believe I have the very best husband in the world.  : )

These windows will become the walls of the greenhouse.  Ed has been collecting them for some time to have enough.  Can you not wait until it is finished?  I sure can't !

This is a shot of our little peach tree in bloom.

The two Tom turkeys strutting thier stuff.

A close up of one of them.  They are pretty big now.

The rooster here is one of our Dark Cornish/Speckled Sussex crosses.  He has the broadbreast of his mother the Dark Cornish, and the bigger size of his Sussex father.  We had 3 hatched out and all three turned out to be roosters.  They will be added to the freezer as soon as Ed had time to do that chore.  Along with 4 more roosters in the other yard.

I was standing on the pallet walkway in the laying hen area looking toward the turkey, dark cornish barn/pen.  The rooster in this photo is our Aracana the girls have named Rainbow.  Under the white tarp in the back ground is the building materials to make the cow barn out of.  That is next on Ed's list of things to do this year.

And here are the girls taking their first swim of the season.  It was hot outside, but that water was very cold and they didn't last but about 20 minutes "swimming"  LOL!

There you have another fine day on the farm at Bountiful Acres.  Make sure to check back and watch the progress of the greenhouse.  You never know what else we might be doing here.

May the Lord bless you!